Re: [PATCH] Documentation/changes: Raise minimum supported binutils version to 2.23

Kees Cook
2020-03-16T20:54:40Z

On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 05:02:59PM +0100, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> Long overdue patch, see below.
>
> Plan is to queue it after 5.7-rc1.
>
> ---
> From: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
> Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 16:28:36 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] Documentation/changes: Raise minimum supported binutilsa version to 2.23
>
> The currently minimum-supported binutils version 2.21 has the problem of
> promoting symbols which are defined outside of a section into absolute.
> According to Arvind:
>
> binutils-2.21 and -2.22. An x86-64 defconfig will fail with
> Invalid absolute R_X86_64_32S relocation: _etext
> and after fixing that one, with
> Invalid absolute R_X86_64_32S relocation: __end_of_kernel_reserve
>
> Those two versions of binutils have a bug when it comes to handling
> symbols defined outside of a section and binutils 2.23 has the proper
> fix, see: https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/binutils/2012-06/msg00155.html
>
> Therefore, up to the fixed version directly, skipping the broken ones.
>
> Currently shipping distros already have the fixed binutils version so
> there should be no breakage resulting from this.
>
> For more details about the whole thing, see the thread in Link.
>
> Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>

Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

-Kees

> Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200110202349.1881840-1-nivedita@alum.mit.edu
> ---
> Documentation/process/changes.rst | 2 +-
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/process/changes.rst b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> index e47863575917..7a842655142c 100644
> --- a/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ you probably needn't concern yourself with pcmciautils.
> ====================== =============== ========================================
> GNU C 4.6 gcc --version
> GNU make 3.81 make --version
> -binutils 2.21 ld -v
> +binutils 2.23 ld -v
> flex 2.5.35 flex --version
> bison 2.0 bison --version
> util-linux 2.10o fdformat --version
> --
> 2.21.0
>
> --
> Regards/Gruss,
> Boris.
>
> https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette

--
Kees Cook